Adventures in Jasper

As usual, mum and I were the first up in the morning. We headed down to breakfast and one of the servers recommended we visit Raven Adventure to find out about tours in the area.Lucikly Jasper isn't that big, so it wasn't hard to find. Roh joined us and we decided on a walk to an ice river. Seriously, the river is so frozen that we could walk on it and the ice falls down the side were just amazing. There are loads of pictures on my photo website, if you want to check them out.

As we were the only 3 in the trip it meant we could meander along at our own pace. We saw bear scratchings on trees, learnt a lot about the flora and fauna from our well versed guide, who seemed to really enjoy what he was doing, and generally had a fun time. Suffice to say this is the first walk I've undertaken since being pregnant and my little belly started to suffer towards the end. Do they make belly slings? :)

At the river we had to put on cleats (mini-crampons) to walk on the ice. - having carried them all this way we might as well use them! Eh? Basically they're like a pair of plastic slippers with what looked like the points of small screws sticking outwards.

Once we'd got over our nervousness all was good and we had a fun time exploring around the river, behind the ice falls etc. It was really beautiful and really worthwhile. Because the weather is so clement for this time of year, it's unlikely the river will be walkable when Verity and Dunc are back in a few weeks. Usually it freezes until mid/ end April.

Don't worry, the ice pick was just for show - Brad needed somewhere to store it while he took our photos.Very cleverly there was a shorter walk home and we collapsed for a kip in the afternoon. All this fresh air can't be good for a person.

After the trip I got my first hint that meat might be back on the menu. We walked past a hot dog BBQ, and I could barely contain myself. One dog with onion & ketchup later and this was one happy mummy.

Dinner was at Andy's Bistro - I think if we were seafood fans we'd have fared much better, but it was a nice place to go. And again to collapse in sleep.